Smokey, the steelblue female VT, has just died early this morning~ and I am still trying to puzzle through how it happened.. :(

When I first noticed that she had finrot, I increased W/Cs although it appeared it didn't help and it got worse. She had been housed in a 10g tank with 2 male VTs (there were dividers in the tank!! w/cs were done every 3 days, then every 2 days- her finrot worsened.) Her finrot (that was on her tail fin) was jagged across the fin. So then I tried quarantining her in a 2g tank, and made sure I did 75% W/Cs every 2 days. I also added bettafix and IALs to her tank.

One day, she seemed to be a picky eater with her presoaked hikari bio-gold pellets, she'd spit it out 2x+ before finally eating it. She never ate again.. 2 days later, she showed the symptom of dropsy :( :( Following advice on the internet, i added aquarium salt to her tank, as well as Maracyn 1 and 2. 2 days ago, someone here advised me that it should've been epsom salt that i should've used!! I was very upset that I probably worsened her condition/tortured her further~ Over the past 4 days, I literally watched her disintegrate......... :( This morning, her topfin was completely missing, and scales were falling off of the top of her head.... I couldn't bear to watch her suffer. :(:(:(

I don't understand how this happened! I fed her (and the 2 VT boys, 1 CT) presoaked pellets and boiled frozen peas. And I did W/C, and they have a filter/heater...... :( They never had any major illnesses back when I had them housed in 1.5g bowls, w/o heaters/filters!!!! I don't understand what is happening?

Could finrot be a symptom of something else???? Of the 3 boys, one of the VTs and the CT appear to have finrot/splits in their fin......... I think I saw the VT chasing his own tail (though he has never been a tailbiter before!) and I have no clue why the CT is missing parts of his tail!

Sometime if the bettas see each other through the dividers they can get stressed and start biting their tails, I have one that if he sees any other fish he starts ripping at his tail...but when he can't he doesn't do it at all. Perhaps your little guy did that too. If one betta has fin rot since they shared the water it could spread if caused by bacteria perhaps hat is why you are seeing it in your other fish as well.

im guessing that the peas had done a serious number on her digestive tract, i may be wrong but i've read several times that bettas are mainly carnivorous and that vegetable matter can do some serious damage to them, somebody feel free to correct me if im mistaken.

the others are most likely suffering from the veggies and the death of their "friend" with the finrot being a common contagion in the water it isn't that unlikely that the others would develope it too, they should be fine if veggies are cut out of their diet and they are properly treated for the finrot, in either case if your one male has started to become a tail-biter it might be wise to remove him into a seperate container from the others just to give him time to relax and destress.

On Monday, I will be intensively cleaning the tank: cleaning the tank w/ EXTREMELY mild bleach solution, putting in new dividers, cleaning the filter & changing all media (just in case~ it wasn't a cycled tank anyway!) I will also intensively clean the hospital tank, as I think it's the best solution for the possible-tail-biting fish~ Chef Boyardee!

@Jamietron: I do believe you are most probably right!! That particular betta seemed perfectly fine in an unfiltered/unheated 1.5g fishbowl. Now that he's in a divided tank, he seems to flare at the other 2 males the most!!!!! (He is the betta in the middle section of the divided 10g tank!) Of course.. I could move him to one of the 'outside' partioned parts of the tank~ And so.... he'd only see/flare at one betta. Hrm..

(((On the other hand...... there are 2 possible finrot victims, and just 1 small hospital tank.. What to do! @_@)))

@ Shmifty: I got the idea about the boiled frozen pea from a forum just like this one, bettafishforum.com (I believe the website went down a mth or two ago??) I have also noticed that some of its members have moved(?) to this site as well :):)
Anyway, I was told that daphnia or boiled frozen pea was good for helping deconstipate em! I hope this is true..... b/c I have always fed them a lil bit of pea, once a week~

Thx dramaqueen, I wasn't aware of that..!!! I will pick up some daphnia asap.

It might have been, louu! It started off eating away at her tail~ before her last days (& no eating + dropsy 2 days later,) Strangely enough.. shortly after she had dropsy, the infection stopped advancing on her tail, and started with her topfin. By the time she died, her whole top fin was gone....... and scales were coming off the top of her head.. :(

I'm still shocked with why she got finrot though, I do believe I do clean the tank water religiously. I will switch to daphnia though!

Thx dramaqueen, I wasn't aware of that..!!! I will pick up some daphnia asap.

It might have been, louu! It started off eating away at her tail~ before her last days (& no eating + dropsy 2 days later,) Strangely enough.. shortly after she had dropsy, the infection stopped advancing on her tail, and started with her topfin. By the time she died, her whole top fin was gone....... and scales were coming off the top of her head.. :(

I'm still shocked with why she got finrot though, I do believe I do clean the tank water religiously. I will switch to daphnia though!

Sometimes things just happened not matter how careful you are, she could have had a poor immune system naturally as well. I am sure you did the best your could as an owner keeping her nice and healthy